The Crypto Industry Is Dying, That Is A Good Thing: Pompliano

Anthony Pompliano says most of the crypto industry is already dead and that the market has not fully admitted it yet. In a May 6 video posted on X, the Bitcoin investor and commentator argued that the sector’s long tail of unused chains, illiquid tokens and speculative projects is being cleared out as the parts with real utility merge into the broader financial system.

Pompliano said the reaction to his initial post on X was immediate and hostile. He had written that “most of the crypto industry is dead and it’s never coming back,” a message he said followed him through the Consensus conference in Miami.

“I have been called an idiot, I’ve been told I was wrong, and I must have been asked over 50 times about the tweet while I was at the Consensus Crypto Conference yesterday down in Miami,” Pompliano said. “But after spending the day at the conference, I’m more convinced today than I was yesterday. Most of the crypto industry is dead and it is never coming back.”

Crypto Ghost Chains And Zombie Coins

Pompliano’s core argument rests on what he sees as a broken business cycle inside crypto. In traditional industries, failed companies are shut down, capital is redeployed and talent moves toward stronger ideas. In crypto, he said, that clearing mechanism rarely works because blockchains can keep running with minimal participation and tokens can linger far above zero even after liquidity and relevance have evaporated.

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He described the result as an ecosystem filled with “ghost chains” and “zombie coins.” Ghost chains are networks that remain technically operational but have little meaningful activity. Zombie coins are tokens whose communities or markets have collapsed, while remaining holders are often unable to exit without taking severe losses.

“There are millions of coins and there are thousands of blockchains,” Pompliano said. “Just those two things alone would make my original claim that most of the crypto industry is dead accurate. Because you have to ask yourself: does anyone actually believe that millions of crypto coins are going to thrive in the future?”

Pompliano said he asked that question from the stage at Consensus and “literally zero people raised their hand.”
Beyond unused networks and dead tokens, Pompliano argued that crypto has lost much of the ideological conviction that once defined its early base. The industry, in his view, has shifted from “hardcore missionaries” who prioritized the success of Bitcoin and the underlying technology toward “mercenaries” who chase whichever trade offers the largest financial reward.

That shift, he said, is visible in short-lived meme tokens, scam coins, market manipulation, rising yield-farming incentives and product launches designed more for attention than utility. Pompliano’s criticism was not aimed at speculation alone, but at an industry culture he believes has become detached from solving real user problems.
“If you have mercenaries outnumbering the missionaries, the broader crypto industry is now run by people who don’t understand or believe in the original vision for the industry,” he said. “As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And I think that’s what’s happening across the industry.”

Wall Street Is Absorbing Crypto

Pompliano also pushed back against what he called the “we hate investors class,” pointing to online criticism of venture capital, large financial institutions and regulation. He argued that venture firms funded much of the early infrastructure that allowed users to buy, store and send Bitcoin, while major institutions are now becoming the dominant distribution layer for crypto exposure.

Morgan Stanley’s plan to launch Bitcoin trading through E-Trade was his central example. Pompliano noted that E-Trade has 8.6 million clients and said Morgan Stanley intends to offer Bitcoin trading with lower fees than Coinbase and Charles Schwab, using ZeroHash as infrastructure. He framed that as a major “narrative violation” for crypto-native firms.

At the same time, Pompliano said crypto-native companies are moving in the opposite direction by adding equities, prediction markets, options, commodities and other non-crypto products. The distinction between crypto platforms and traditional brokerages is becoming less clear.